Oculus Rift Price is Out, and It’s Higher Than Expected

It’s been over five years since the Oculus Rift was first put together as a rough prototype in Palmer Luckey’s parents’ garage. And after years of waiting with bated breath, it looks like we’re finally getting a price: $599 US.

What’s more, the price could even increase depending on where you’re getting it. Gamers in the UK will be able to get it for $730, and $754 for the other European nations. Australians will need to shell out only $460 US.

Unsurprisingly, folks are caught off guard by the announced price tag, which is higher than they had expected. They had initially been “promised” a $200-$400 price range when Luckey spoke with Eurogamer in September, 2014. It should be noted that this wasn’t guaranteed though, because he did say that the price could fluctuate depending on multiple factors, such as scale, pre-orders and business negotiations.

Luckey was quick to defend the price range, saying that “A lot of things changed,” and tweeted, “ High end VR is expensive, but Rift is obscenely cheap for what it is”. He continued to clarify, “[The Oculus Rift is] obscenely cheap in the same way a $500 120′ 4K OLED TV would be obscenely cheap” on Twitter.

He pointed at taxes for the higher European prices, and had the following to tweet:

In fact, some countries are getting a slightly better deal than the US, all things considered—remember, we have per state sales tax.

It looks like things aren’t going as bad as most think, however, because the Oculus Rift is apparently being sold at a faster rate than was expected. Luckey told Polygon, “I can’t talk about numbers, but we sold through in 10 minutes what I thought we were going to sell through in a few hours, which is one of the reasons the site was beginning to buckle.”

Players who pledged for the development kit rung on the Oculus Rift Kickstarter will reportedly receive a free Kickstarter Edition of the headset.

Want to check if your PC can support the Rift? Check out the system requirements below:

Nvidia GTX 970 / AMD 290 equivalent or greater

Intel Core i5-4590 equivalent or greater

8 GB+ RAM

HDMI 1.3 video output

three USB 3.0 ports and one USB 2.0 port

Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (64-bit) or newer

Pre-orders started January 6th, with Oculus Rift units being shipped out in May. The Pre-Order Bundle will also include an Xbox One controller and copies of Lucky’s Tale and EVE: Valkyrie on top of the headset and sensors.